6005858883.Pdf

HHeller_cover.inddeller_cover.indd 1 11/25/2011/25/2011 7:09:217:09:21 PMPM HHeller_ffirs.inddeller_ffirs.indd vivi 11/12/2011/12/2011 5:50:385:50:38 PMPM Hairspray

HHeller_ffirs.inddeller_ffirs.indd i 11/12/2011/12/2011 5:50:375:50:37 PMPM Wiley-Blackwell Series in Film and Television Series Editors: Diane Negra and Yvonne Tasker

Experienced media studies teachers know that real breakthroughs in the classroom are often triggered by texts that an austere notion of the canon would disqualify. Unlike other short book series, Wiley- Blackwell Studies in Film and Television works from a broad field of prospective film and television programs, selected less for their adher- ence to definitions of “art” than for their resonance with audiences. From Top Hat to Hairspray, from early sitcoms to contemporary forensic dramas, the series encompasses a range of film and television material that reflects diverse genres, forms, styles, and periods. The texts explored here are known and recognized worldwide for their ability to generate discussion and debate about evolving media indus- tries as well as, crucially, representations and conceptualizations of gender, class, citizenship, race, consumerism, and capitalism, and other facets of identity and experience. This series is designed to com- municate these themes clearly and effectively to media studies students at all levels while also introducing groundbreaking scholarship of the very highest caliber. These are the films and shows we really want to watch, the new “teachable canon” of alternative classics that range from silent film to CSI.

HHeller_ffirs.inddeller_ffirs.indd iiii 11/12/2011/12/2011 5:50:375:50:37 PMPM HAIRSPRAY DANA HELLER

A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Heller, Dana A. (Dana Alice), 1959– Hairspray / Dana Heller. p. cm. – (Wiley-Blackwell series in film and television) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4051-9162-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)–ISBN 978-1-4051-9198-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Hairspray (Motion picture : 1988) I. Title. PN1997.H2583H45 2011 791.43´72–dc22 2010043501 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This book is published in the following electronic formats: ePDFs 9781444395617; Wiley Online Library 9781444395631; ePub 9781444395624 Set in 10.5/13pt Minion by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India

1 2011

HHeller_ffirs.inddeller_ffirs.indd iviv 11/12/2011/12/2011 5:50:385:50:38 PMPM For the kids whose day is coming: Dasha, Galushka, Lindsay, Nastya, Ryan, and Samantha

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List of Figures viii Acknowledgments x

Introducing Hairspray 1 1 The Roots 7 2 Tangled Genres: The Teenpic Gets a Makeover 30 3 Hair with Body: Corpulence, Unruliness, and Cultural Subversion 49 4 Highlighting History: Hairspray’s Uses of Popular Memory 80 5 More Than 20 Years and Still Holding: The Many Lives of Hairspray 107

Notes 134 Bibliography 141 Index 148

HHeller_ftoc.inddeller_ftoc.indd viivii 11/14/2011/14/2011 12:44:4812:44:48 PMPM List of Figures

Divine from Pink Flamingos (1972) 14 The Senator Theater. Photograph by Dana Heller 28 Divine from the trial scene in Female Trouble (1974) 40 Tracy Turnblad (Rikki Lake) and Penny Pingleton (Leslie Ann Powers) shake-a-tail-feather 46 Tracy’s Council interview: “Would you ever swim in an integrated swimming pool?” Asks I.Q. (Holter Graham) 50 Heteromorphic chic: Tracy’s roach-print gown (designed by Van Smith) 56 Divine as Edna Turnblad 70 Norman Rockwell, “The Problem We All Live With” (1964) 93 Lil’ Inez (Cyrkle Milbourne), denied entrance to Preteen day: “I have a dream” 94 Jazz legend Ruth Brown as Motormouth Maybelle 95 The real Buddy Deane, in a cameo role as a member of the press corps 104 Arvin Hodgepile (Divine) tries to block television cameras from filming the race riots at Tilted Acres 105

HHeller_flast.inddeller_flast.indd viiiviii 11/14/2011/14/2011 9:20:009:20:00 AMAM LIST OF FIGURES ix

“Good Morning, Baltimore”: Tracy arrives at school atop a garbage truck in Adam Shankman’s cinematic adaptation of the Broadway musical 124 John Travolta as Edna Turnblad 127 Lil’ Inez captures the crown 128

HHeller_flast.inddeller_flast.indd ixix 11/14/2011/14/2011 9:20:019:20:01 AMAM Acknowledgments

I had more fun writing this book than I felt comfortable admitting while it was in progress. Now that it’s done, what the heck – this was a blast. My hope is that the pleasure I experienced will convey to readers. If it does not, I will have only myself to blame. If it does, I will have my family to thank for providing me with the space and material support to revel in my quirky enthusiasms. Thanks to my partner, Galina Tsoy and our dog, Zoey, whom we adopted at the start of my sabbatical, and house-trained between writing sessions, and whose own growth soon outpaced the manuscript’s. Thanks also to my parents, Dorothy and Edwin Heller, who have always been wonderfully supportive of my work, and whose lives continue to enrich mine in countless ways. One day, a student happened to walk into my office and found me giggling at my computer screen, immersed in a DVD assemblage of John Waters’ childhood home movies and early interviews. “You really get paid for this?!” He asked. I do. I am grateful to Old Dominion University for allowing me to get away with it for 20 years. I do not know exactly how it happened that I became the resident defender of all things considered in bad taste, but there are worse ways to make a living. Thanks to Kathy Pim, former Humanities Program Administrative Assistant. Thanks also to the students who contributed to this research: Dana Staves, Carnelia Gipson, Kate Skophammer, and Ana Timofte. I am deeply grateful to Matthew Baskin, Margot Morse, Diane Negra, Yvonne Tasker, and all the folks at Wiley-Blackwell who helped produce the solid artifact – the book itself.

HHeller_flast.inddeller_flast.indd x 11/14/2011/14/2011 9:20:019:20:01 AMAM ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi

Finally, I want to thank John Waters for his generosity in allowing me to interview him and spend a memorable afternoon in his Baltimore home. Thanks also to his assistant, Susan Allanbeck, for helping me arrange that meeting and locate that home on a map. Thanks to Atomic Books/Atomic Pop for making sure my letter reached Mr. Waters’ hands. Thanks also to Gayle, manager of the Senator Theater, for the Ju-Ju Beads and Peanut Chews. When you work in film studies, it is always helpful to know the person who holds the key to the candy counter.

HHeller_flast.inddeller_flast.indd xixi 11/14/2011/14/2011 9:20:019:20:01 AMAM HHeller_flast.inddeller_flast.indd xiixii 11/14/2011/14/2011 9:20:019:20:01 AMAM Introducing Hairspray

Why a book on Hairspray, you ask? I’ll explain by way of an anecdote. I was visiting a small, liberal arts college in the Northeast, making polite conversation with a group of fellow professors who, like me, had been invited to examine students in the college’s undergraduate honors program. The season was Spring, the month was May, and the prospects of a long, enterprising summer ahead had us all in high spirits. Eventually our conversation turned, as it tends to do in academic circles, to what we were currently working on. By turn, each of us described his or her current project: a post-colonial analysis of the global coffee trade; an oral history of the Women’s Movement in twentieth century Italy. Then it came to me. “I’m writing a book on John Waters’ Hairspray,” I announced gleefully, having only the week before signed with a publisher. However, my announcement was met with awkward silence and raised eyebrows, which was finally interrupted by one particularly incredulous anthropologist who looked me square in the eye and asked, “And what of any importance might one say about that?” Right there, right then, I knew I had the introduction to this book. It was not just that the incident annoyed me, which it did. It was not just that I found myself uncharacteristically caught off guard and unprepared to answer the question, which I was. It was just that word: Importance. Meaning, of course, scholarly importance. Who can argue with it?

HHeller_intro.inddeller_intro.indd 1 11/11/2011/11/2011 5:49:555:49:55 AMAM 2 INTRODUCING HAIRSPRAY

Well, if nothing else, I would like to believe that 20 years of thinking, writing, and talking to others about the presumed highpoints and lowpoints of American cultural history has taught me to look most closely and carefully at the low, the seemingly inconsequential, the distasteful, the presumably frivolous or non-essential. Since when we look closely at the artifacts, events, ideas, and texts that tend to get relegated to the sidelines of scholarly importance we often – not always, mind you, but often – discover something uncomfortably true about the cultural legacy of the United States as it is and the cultural legacy of the United States as we would like to imagine it. These discoveries are perhaps least flattering to those who would aspire to arbitrate in the matter of what constitutes seriousness or good taste, particularly as such discoveries tend to be revealing of the ongoing suppression of unschooled, working class, non-White, queer, or otherwise marginalized sensibilities and perspectives. Moreover, these discoveries tend to champion our more unseemly desires and pleasures, along with the everyday aspiration to challenge the social and intellectual status quo that underwrites so much cultural production and reception in the United States. I need not rehearse yet again the well-known, oft-cited history of Mark Twain and his mercurial critical reception to make my point. After all, the basic plot of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn did not substantially change over time. However, our culture’s estimation of its importance most certainly did.1 So, what of any importance might one say about Hairspray? Well, to begin with, this book argues that Waters’ film is a uniquely American piece of comedic movie-making that successfully channels the aspira- tions of outsider praxis into the wholesome mainstream of popular culture and national myth, and in the process manages to pleasantly suspend the currents of mainstream cinema’s representational and signifying practices. When I interviewed Waters for this book, he admitted that of all his many films, including his early underground works such as the notorious Pink Flamingos (1972), Hairspray “is the most subversive film I ever made” (Pers. Com., 2009). While this may seem oddly counterintuitive to anyone familiar with Waters’ movies, the central aim of this book is to explore the meaning and legitimacy

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of his claim. Of course, such an exercise is not in itself sufficient to justify a monograph on any single film, so let me briefly outline, point by point (and in accordance with the structure of the discussion to follow) the importance of this unimportant film, the way I plan to argue for it, and the reasons for my conviction that this book – like it or not – had to be written:

1 Assuming that some readers may be unfamiliar with John Waters’ life, career, and the films he made before Hairspray, the book begins with what I consider to be essential background for understanding the social and biographical contexts, cultural influences and obsessions, and the artistic trajectory that com- bined to make Hairspray what it is: a marked point of significant aesthetic convergence in popular American movie-making. This convergence was perhaps best expressed in David Edelstein’s Rolling Stone review of the film. In describing the film as “A family movie both the Bradys and the Mansons could adore,” Edelstein underscores the fact that in Hairspray, the PG family movie meets the midnight cult film (1988, p. 47). At the very least, his description poses a challenge to anyone who would seek to locate Hairspray in relationship to received notions of cinematic genre. 2 The second chapter picks up this challenge, arguing that in this genial “teenpic”-styled comedy, 1960s nostalgia and a message of racial equality coexist harmoniously with the transgressive ener- gies of the underground film circuit, the DIY ethos of the punk and independent film movements, and the deconstructive sensibilities of gay culture’s camp politics. The release of Hairspray announced officially the death of trash cinema as such, and the commercial appropriation by Hollywood of confrontational bad taste, which is now the life-blood of the industry’s annual slate of comedy and horror releases (such as the Deuce Bigalow and Saw franchises), not to mention the aesthetic template for what we have come to know as “reality television.” Realizing that underground movies had lost their ability to shock audiences and inspire new ways of seeing, Waters did the thing that seemed most

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